


Matters Of The Spark

by Predaking



Series: Disabled Robots [1]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Disabled Character, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Physical hurt/comfort, Seizures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 16:33:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17984702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Predaking/pseuds/Predaking
Summary: Rewind helps Chromedome through one of his seizures. Because not having innermost and scrambling your brain out of habit does tend to have long term effects.





	Matters Of The Spark

**Author's Note:**

> For background knowledge; what Chromedome is experiencing in this is loosely based off Wolff Parkinson White syndrome. But for whatever reason I can’t find any online info about the seizures this causes, which is a symptom of this I have personal experience with so I’m not sure why it’s not talked about anywhere…? So I’m just basing this entirely off of personal experience with WPW seizures and it may not be entirely super accurate to the disease. I’m not even sure if they are seizures really but like I said I can’t find any info on it. And since I don’t know what to call it, for the sake of fic I’m calling them seizures. 
> 
> But also it’s fluffy robot fan fiction and I’m translating a lot of it to make sense on a robot body so I don’t think anyone is gonna kill me for not portraying it 100% medically accurate H, but I just thought I’d give reasonings. 
> 
> Also though since I wanna gush a little about my hesdcanon! My reasonings for connecting it; WPW is when your heart sends out the wrong electrical impulses in layman’s terms, since Chromedome no longer has innermost. I’d think that would interfere with his spark being able to send out the right signals to the rest of his body. 
> 
> Anyway enjoy !!

Chromedome hadn’t been at Swerve’s.

Which, to most people probably wouldn’t have seemed like a big deal. While it was commonly joked that Rewind and Chromedome were attached at the hip, they  _ did _ have a life outside of each other, and did things without the other quite often. But no matter what it was they did that day, separate or apart, it was generally agreed upon by the end of it they’d meet at Swerve’s. Of course this wasn’t a  _ rule,  _ they didn’t have to go to the bar if they didn’t want to. But, usually, Rewind would’ve received a comm about Chromedome’s absence if he wasn’t feeling up to it.

Now of course this wasn’t reason for Rewind to panic about it, anything could’ve happened to make him forget. It wasn’t as if sirens were blaring that yet  _ another  _ rampaging killer was storming through the halls. Hell, he could’ve just fallen asleep early and recharged longer than he meant to. Maybe he just didn’t feel like drinking tonight, maybe he got busy with something Brainstorm needed, a whole list of perfectly reasonable explanations went on. 

Still, he waited about another ten minutes, with no sign of the skinny mech showing up. Resigned to his fate, Rewind gave up waiting. He waved Swerve down, getting a couple of cubes of plain sweet energon for the road, planning to offer one of them to Chromedome once back at his hab.

Rewind had to shuffle the sealed cubes awkwardly as he walked,  the one meant for Chromedome being just slightly too big to fit comfortably in his hand. He ended up cradling it in the crook of his elbow, having to frequently shift to avoid it falling out and smashing against the ground. 

With his servos full, Rewind had to wedge the tip of his pede into the seam of the door to force the locks to disengage. It was a trick he had learned a while ago once he got tired of having to stretch up to reach the keypad. The Lost Light was  _ not _ built with minibots in mind. 

After a little bit of wiggling, the door to his hab hissed open. Maybe he should’ve been worried the locks could be forced open so easily, but that was for another time, another place. Right now his worry was on Chromedome, not a broken lock on a safe ship. (Well, “safe” could be argued, probably.)

Rewind set the cubes of energon down on the floor once he stepped into the room, stretching his stiff arms until his joints popped. He picked up the smaller cube, placing it on his bedside table, returning to offer the other to Chromedome. 

“Hey, Domey, brought you something from…” Rewind trailed off as he finally turned to face Chromedome’s side of the room, and he felt embarrassed he was too lost in thought about door locks to notice the rapid venting coming from the end of the room closest to the window.

Chromedome was hanging off the side of his berth, fingers clawed desperately into the soft silicone of the top pad, the only thing keeping him from crashing to the floor. He hovered barely above the ground, knees pressed tightly into his chest, staring in Rewind’s direction, but the hyperventilation and twitching indicated that this was coincidence more than a deliberate plea for help from his Conjunx. 

Chromedome couldn’t move, he could barely even speak, but he tried anyway, panicking at the thought of making Rewind upset. His vents labored, forcing out a garbled, “m’ s’rry-“ before the pain of trying to speak was too much, and his visor fritzed with held back tears. 

Rewind was no stranger to Chromedome’s seizures, but no matter how many times it happened Rewind could never get used to seeing his Conjunx attacked by his own spark. But the key to dealing with these was keeping calm, panicking would help nobody. 

Rewind set the cube he had been holding down. Instead he got to work on step one. He pulled all his pillows off his own berth, some extras from the closet, but not daring take the ones off Chromedome’s berth; those would need to be there for later. Also from the closet he retrieved a thick, fluffy blanket, as well as a couple smaller ones. He arranged all of these in a nest on the floor near Chromedome’s ass. Then it was onto step two.

“How long have you been like this?” Rewind asked softly, walking to the other side of the bed to unhook one of Chromedome’s hands from the silicone.

Chromedome took a minute to check his chronometer, longer than he would’ve had to had he been functioning fully. “Thir...th’ry.” In the time it took to check his chronometer, Rewind had already hooked one of his clawed hands out of the pad. It curled into a tight fist and snapped against his chest with a loud  _ clang. _

Thirty minutes, this was a long one then. Rewind made a note of that in his drafted message to Ratchet. Instead of unhooking the other servo from the bed, Rewind walked back around, where Chromedome was starting to slip to the floor now that his entire weight was resting on one arm. Rewind made shushing sounds and bumped his mask against the side of Chromedome’s head as he wrapped his arms around Chromedome’s torso, starting to gently lead him to where gravity already had plans. 

His fingers tore up strips of silicone as it left the berth, but the pad was covered in identical scratches anyway. Once the other hand was free, it too curled into a fist and hit Chromedome’s chest like a rubber band snapping back. 

Thanks to the nest of pillows, Chromedome didn’t hit the ground hard. And thanks to Rewind cradling him, instead of slamming to the floor he was lowered to nestle into the multitudes of soft objects. Finally, Chromedome lay in the nest in a tense fetal position. Frame balled up so tight you’d think his spinal struts would threaten to break. He huffed labored vents still, his body occasionally twitching like it wanted to ball up even tighter than it already was. But the convulsions would pass, and he’d, in the barest sense of the word, relax back to the original position.

As previously mentioned, this wasn’t new.

You see, there was a reason you were sparing with giving your innermost out, and only in the tiniest of doses. Of course it had its sentimental values, but as any disgruntled medic would remind someone being too careless with his innermost offerings, it had biological purposes too. The layer of energon directly around the spark helped to cushion spark flares, the cushioning also helping make it so it wasn’t such a huge impact on the frame when it beat abnormally. Most importantly, though, it was the first line of getting signals from the spark to the rest of the body, electrical pulses being able to easily be absorbed by the innermost and transferred to the rest of the frame. 

So when you didn’t  _ have _ innermost, when you were “born dry” as Chromedome would insist, of course it caused issues. Instead of being cushioned, whenever your spark did anything other than beat gently, you felt it at full force. Your chest felt tight and ached until the flare passed. And when you couldn’t rely on innermost to get your spark signals to the rest of your body, your spark had to rely on the next layer of energon and wiring to talk to the frame. Systems it wasn’t as close to or familiar with, and often times because of this distant relationship it glitched. And when it glitched, the spark panicked. And when it panicked it wasn’t being heard it would try again, and again and again and again until your spark was racing two or three times as fast as it was supposed to beat. Most of the time, mechs with this condition could be calmed with medicine or TLC and be on their merry way in no time. 

Unless you were someone like Chromedome. Who through centuries of neglecting his health, abusing his frame, and scrambling his own processor meant;

  1. These glitches happened rather frequently. And-
  2. When they did happen, your frame didn’t take it so lightly.



So, what this led to was Chromedome had seizures. And he had them quite often. But not the kind you would immediately think of hearing the word “seizure”, where a bot would thrash out of his own control and the most you could do was make sure he didn’t hit his head. Chromedome’s seizures were different. 

When Chromedome was having an attack, his damaged processor didn’t register anything other than “ _ spark is hurting”  _ and on instinct, knew it had to protect the spark. It didn’t register the spark was attacking itself, just that it was hurting, so Chromedome would curl his limbs over his chest in the smallest ball he could manage to protect his spark from the imagined attacker. And- since his frame was rather sickly, and his processor wouldn’t work, and his spark sure as hell wouldn’t work. All his frame knew how to do in that moment was “protect spark”. His frame would lock into this position, unable to move at all until the spark attack passed. During this, all of his systems went into meltdown mode about having nothing to guide them while his entire body was reduced to one instinct: protect his spark. 

And he was never so fortunate to have a seizure when he was already sitting or lying down, no of course he wasn’t. If he was standing, his frame would lock and fall to the floor. If he was leaning against a surface, say a counter or a table, his arms would lock to grabbing the surface until Rewind or someone else manage to untangle him from it. Chromedome also didn’t much like sitting on stools anymore after he had a seizure at the bar and smashed his face against the counter. 

There wasn’t anything really to be done about it, this severe of a reaction was only caused by having  _ multiple _ things wrong with your frame. Medicine and surgery did nothing, so all he could do was cope with the seizures. Rewind helped, he made sure he was comfortable, checked to make sure he hadn’t bumped anything on the way down, and swaddled him up in blankets and love until his spark finally realized he was safe. 

Which is what he did now, as he took the bigger fluffy blanket and tucked it around himself and Chromedome. Rewind snuggled as close to his front as he could with a wall of limbs in the way, Primus he could feel his frantic sparkbeat from here, this was a bad one. He made another note in his message draft. 

“Are you okay? Did you hit anything?” Rewind mumbled, putting his small hand against the side of Chromedome’s helm and rubbing circles with his thumb. 

Chromedome struggled to talk, his vocalizer refusing to online. It was seen as as secondary system, maybe even tertiary. No energy could be spared when his frame was on lockdown. 

He still tried, a few aborted noises making their way out. “M’- ns-...gH-“ he finally gave up as his fans whined louder, as if telling him to stop.  

Rewind, still keeping one hand on his helm, used the other to push aside his tense fingers and slide it into the larger mech’s palm. 

“Don’t talk, just tap my hand. Once for yes, twice for no.”

It was a struggle, Chromedome could still barely move, but his digit twitched once against Rewind, and before anything else another convulsion hit him, and he squeezed so hard Rewind’s plating creaked in distress. Since he couldn’t tell if he was trying to do it a second time, Rewind decided to just settle on a “no” and have the medic double check later. 

“Okay, okay. Shhshshsh..” Rewind let Chromedome keep holding his hand, the convulsion soon passed and his grip loosened only slightly. Rewind started up petting his helm again. “It’s okay, Domey, you’re okay. I’m here, you’re okay.”

Rewind let his engine idle in a purr, cooing softly with multiple reassurances he was safe and fine. The grip around his servo was staring to loosen, making Rewind think the seizure was starting to ease up. He pressed his mask up against Chromedome’s, continuing to shush him and purr as his vocalizer came back on, but all that came out was pants and whines. Finally, his frame was freed, and the change was immediate. He unspooled from a ball, falling limply against Rewind. Rewind moved to rub his back instead, trying to ease any remaining tension out of his frame. 

“Okay...okay, are you good?” Rewind asked, not daring move away until Chromedome confirmed otherwise. 

Chromedome nodded weakly, but made no move to get up.

“You wanna stay on the floor or get back in bed?”

Instead of responding, Chromedome tried to push himself up on his own. But his limbs were exhausted, and his frame felt like it was made of jelly. His vision even swam as a nauseous knot formed in his tank. Which wasn’t helping him to calm down any, moving more frantically to get up out of fear of purging on Rewind. (Not like it’d be the first time, but…)

“Heyheyhey, relax, Domey.” Rewind chided, replacing his hand on Chromedome’s back. “Don’t strain yourself, let me help.”

Together, Rewind helped Chromedome get to his pedes. His legs wobbled, forgetting how to lock at the knees despite the fact they were an expert in that barely five minutes ago. Before Chromedome could collapse again, Rewind reached up to take his servos and tug him in the direction of the berth. Where he did end up collapsing in the end, but at least it was into his intended destination. 

Once laying, Chromedome squeezed Rewind against his chest, pushing his face into the crook of the minibot’s neck. Rewind heard him stress purring, trying to ease away the remaining ache in his frame.

“You need to ping me when this happens, Domey.” Rewind chided softly, letting himself be manhandled if that’s what Chromedome needed right now. “I know it’s scary, and I don’t want you to have to go through them alone.”

“I just didn’t- didn’t  want to bother you.” Chromedome huffed, “These go away on their own, it’s nothing to stress over-“

“Yes it is something to stress over! I stress over thinking of you being hurt and I’m not there to help!” Chromedome winced against Rewind, not so subtly reminding him his audial was  _ right there.  _ Rewind felt bad, and he lowered his voice to a mumble, petting the back of his conjunx’s neck. “But at least if you ping me, I can know you’re okay. It doesn’t have to be me, if you don’t want to. It can be Ratchet or Brainstorm, or whoever, just as long as they can check on you. But, Primus, Domey, we’re Conjunx! Stressing me out is kind of part of the deal there.”

Chromedome didn’t respond to that, not wanting to start up the same argument they’d had too many times. Chromedome never looked after his health, that always fell to Rewind. The mech’s head could be chopped off and he’d insist he was fine and it’s go away on it’s own. Only thinking about how he didn’t want to worry anyone, especially Rewind, nothing about getting to a medic.

But he was too tired to argue, and he expressed it with a long sigh. His limbs felt a little more solid now, so he could properly snuggle into Rewind, drinking in his presence.

“I’m sorry, let’s just sleep. I’m exhausted.”

“We need to go to the medbay first, or at least call someone to the hab.” Rewind interrupted. Chromedome’s seizures usually lasted ten minutes at most, not the 40 that had just happened. 

Chromedome whined and shook his head. “I’m okay, I didn’t hit anything and I don’t feel that sick. I don’t need a medic. I’m tired, please?”

Rewind didn’t believe him, but pinned against the sleepy mech’s chest like this there wasn’t much protesting he could do. “Fine, but I’m messaging Ratchet to come and check on you in a couple hours. Okay?”

Chromedome made a noncommittal grunt, not clearly positive or negative affirmation. Rewind wasn’t backing down on this, but for now he’d let Chromedome sleep. Or- actually if the standby vents and loose grip was any indication, he had already passed out.

Rewind gave up, sending his message off to Ratchet with his list he had been making of seizure symptoms, before relaxing and bumping his mask against a Chromedome’s chest in a kiss. “You’re gonna he the death of me, y’know?”

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of thoughts about disabled robots and wanna write about some of them. So hopefully I’ll make more fics like this soon!!


End file.
